I'm an anthropologist, author, and activist who does research about sexuality, gender, health, and digital culture. I've worked across the globe with different of women, men, transgender groups, and youth, who often struggle to have their lives cared about safely and respectfully. I also write creatively about issues that inform my research and my life, including a memoir about dating apps under contract with the University of Toronto Press. For more see my website: http://treenaorchard.com
The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in profound educational, occupational, and familial challenges ... more The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in profound educational, occupational, and familial challenges for school-aged children and their primary caregivers. During this transitional period, resilience was often featured in pandemic discourse as a solution to managing these unprecedented shifts. However, very little concrete information was provided as to how caregivers should or could mobilize this oft-cited resource.
Our qualitative study was designed to explore how primary caregivers survived or thrived, using resilience as an experiential window through which to better understand how they coped with the complex, unprecedented challenges ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic. One-hour interviews were conducted with caregivers (n = 22, all but two identified as female). Analysis revealed that primary caregivers understood resilience to be surviving the pandemic and making it through with the fewest scars for both them and their children.
Caregivers cultivated resilience through finding joy during the hardships, supporting their children’s adaptations to the changing context, and resisting rules. Surviving the pandemic required resilience, and while this emerged in caregivers’ definitions, their lived experience highlights how joy, supporting adaptations, and resistance were employed to cultivate resilience.
Headlines are dubbing 2023 “The Year of the 50+ Woman,” and even suggesting we’re in the midst of... more Headlines are dubbing 2023 “The Year of the 50+ Woman,” and even suggesting we’re in the midst of a midlife women’s renaissance. Of course, we’re more accustomed as a culture to women fading into invisibility with age.
The current social shift is especially undeniable because of the sheer number of high-wattage female celebrities reclaiming the spotlight and forcing the public to reckon with not just the way their stories have been told, but their very existence.
Think Michelle Yeoh winning an Academy Award for Best Actress at 60 and intoning, “Ladies, don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re past your prime!” Or Viola Davis, Helen Mirren, and Andie MacDowell commandeering the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week, the latter rocking silver dresses and wildly natural silver locks.
As anthropologists interested in human mate choice, the evolution of gender roles, and sexuality, we are curious about the uptick in older women dating younger guys. What do these relationships tell us about where we are and where we’re headed as a culture?
Research about campus safety focuses primarily on identifying problematic student behaviours (i.e... more Research about campus safety focuses primarily on identifying problematic student behaviours (i.e., toxic partying, sexual violence) and institutional infrastructure (i.e., lighting, emergency services), to the exclusion of how safety, as an idea and embodied experience, is constructed. Using qualitive interview data from a participatory action research study conducted at Western University, this article uses a critical feminist lens to examine how undergraduate students (n = 23) and administrators (n = 7) spoke about campus safety as well as spatial vulnerability. Study participants shed compelling light on the "uncomfortable" feelings that pervade their movement across and within the university campus. Often presumed to be a spatially distinct place of privilege for all who work and attend classes within its reach, this is not always the case. Participants experienced this space as one of precarious privilege that reflects, reproduces, and sometimes protects hegemonic systems of white, male, cis-gender institutional power. This glimpse into the emotional geography of the campus sheds new light on safety culture and allied feminist research, specifically that which relates to the interplay between contested notions of safety as well as spatial vulnerability for two stakeholder communities in the neoliberal university.
Research about campus safety focuses primarily on identifying problematic student behaviours (i.e... more Research about campus safety focuses primarily on identifying problematic student behaviours (i.e., toxic partying, sexual violence) and institutional infrastructure (i.e., lighting, emergency services), to the exclusion of how safety, as an idea and embodied experience, is constructed. Using qualitive interview data from a participatory action research study conducted at Western University, this article uses a critical feminist lens to examine how undergraduate students (n = 23) and administrators (n = 7) spoke about campus safety as well as spatial vulnerability. Study participants shed compelling light on the "uncomfortable" feelings that pervade their movement across and within the university campus. Often presumed to be a spatially distinct place of privilege for all who work and attend classes within its reach, this is not always the case. Participants experienced this space as one of precarious privilege that reflects, reproduces, and sometimes protects hegemonic systems of white, male, cis-gender institutional power. This glimpse into the emotional geography of the campus sheds new light on safety culture and allied feminist research, specifically that which relates to the interplay between contested notions of safety as well as spatial vulnerability for two stakeholder communities in the neoliberal university.
Background: New quantitative methods to collect and analyze data have produced novel findings in ... more Background: New quantitative methods to collect and analyze data have produced novel findings in ethnobiology. A common application of quantitative methods in ethnobiology is to assess the traditional ecological knowledge of individuals. Few studies have addressed reliability of indices of traditional ecological knowledge constructed with different quantitative methods.
The Routledge Companion to Gender, Sexuality and Culture,, 2022
Branded as the world’s first feminist dating app, Bumble is the only heterosexual platform where ... more Branded as the world’s first feminist dating app, Bumble is the only heterosexual platform where women make the first move and male users must wait to be chosen. Does Bumble deliver on its promise to empower women and help them take charge of their romantic lives? I explore these compelling questions using auto-ethnographic insights from my experiences on the app alongside my insights as an ethnographer with expertise in the fields of sexuality and digital subjectivity. My findings reveal that using Bumble rarely garners successful dating experiences and it creates additional dating labours for women while emasculating men. Far from a recipe for female empowerment, the app exacerbates pre-existing dating inequities and fails as a feminist platform. Detailed excerpts of my dating encounters and observational data about the socio-material and technological factors that inform the marketing of the app are used to illuminate what I call the “Bumble paradox.” The ways in which these timely findings enrich current research into dating apps, sexuality, and gender in the 21st century is also discussed.
People are swiping on dating apps in record numbers and roughly half of these individuals identif... more People are swiping on dating apps in record numbers and roughly half of these individuals identify as women, which may be the reason why the dating app industry recently assigned the top leadership roles to women. This past year, the most powerful dating apps in the world-Bumble and Tinder-were both run by women. Whitney Wolfe Herd is at Bumble while Renate Nyborg was running Tinder. As scholars who write about dating apps like Bumble and dating and feminism, we were interested to see how journalists reported on these two women leading the male-dominated, highly lucrative online dating industry and we wanted to compare that coverage with how the CEOs represented themselves on social media. We looked at last year's top 50 news stories for each woman that came up in search results. We found a pattern of sexist and patronizing coverage. We noted often repeated descriptors for the leaders and created three categories to describe them: "young tycoon," "feminist revenge" and "sexy poster child." We also did a Google Image search and looked at the top 100 results for each CEO to see how a Google search represented these leaders. What we saw were visually distinct styles intricately tied to each brand. In contrast, we observed more diverse and interesting accounts of gender and leadership in the women's personal media spaces. These stories include notions of motherhood, inclusivity and equity. It seems that significant tensions exist between news representations of women leaders in tech versus how they represent themselves.
Despite decades of research and education, sexual and gender-based violence remain distressingly ... more Despite decades of research and education, sexual and gender-based violence remain distressingly prevalent on university and college campuses globally. The taboos associated with sex, gender inequity, and living in a patriarchal world where misogyny is glorified and criminalised are key socio-cultural determinants driving these forms of violence. Less is known about the ways in which sexual slang or terminology impact how students experience and talk about these events. This paper reports on findings from a participatory action study that explored sexual slang use among female and male undergraduate students (n = 23) with the aim of creating more responsive sexual and gender-based violence policies and practices. The terms identified (n = 59) provide a window into the daily lives of these young people, who display remarkable socio-linguistic adaptation and creativity. They also demonstrate how cultural appropriation, the exclusion of queer students, toxic masculinitycontribute to ongoing incidents of sexual and gender-based violence on campus. These findings contribute new insights into sexual terminology among post-secondary students, particularly in the Canadian context where few studies of this nature exist. They also acknowledge the critical role universities can play in making meaningful structural change to prevent traumatic events from occurring.
Gender, Sex, and Tech!: An Intersectional Feminist Guide, 2022
This autoethnographic chapter illuminates the challenges of using dating apps like Bumble, the em... more This autoethnographic chapter illuminates the challenges of using dating apps like Bumble, the empowering opportunities they can offer older women, and the ways young men are struggling to consolidate their sexual desires and selfhood in relation to the increasingly powerful status of women.
Using qualitative data from an interdisciplinary research project about mental health and communi... more Using qualitative data from an interdisciplinary research project about mental health and community engagement with Indigenous youth in Kasabonika Lake First Nation (Ontario, Canada), this paper explores the factors that constrain and facilitate their ability to contribute to the wellbeing of their community. Case studies are employed to demonstrate how the youth navigate complex social and structural conditions within the context of ongoing colonization through federal and provincial governance arrangements, to make a difference in the place they call home and forge unique inroads that reflect their generational realities and aspirations. The paper contributes to ongoing discussions related to mental health, self-determination, and resilience research.
In most body mapping research, the findings selected for analysis elucidate the most dominant and... more In most body mapping research, the findings selected for analysis elucidate the most dominant and commonly identified issues relative to the study objectives, and they are presented thematically. I sought to develop a systematic analytical approach that would enable me to more fully account for the depth and breadth of data featured on the women and men’s maps and the different modes of communication employed (i.e., symbolic, textual, gendered), referred to as “axial embodiment”. This chapter demonstrates how it can be used to enrich the analysis of body mapping data, and I walk the reader through the different stages of its development and application in our study. These are framed as ethical issues because while I was motivated by a desire to refine the analytical potential of the methodology, I was driven more strongly by a sense of obligation to the participants given the tremendous work they put into their artful creations. This chapter concludes with a discussion of how the participants interpret and explain body mapping and their experiences with HIV/AIDS and HAART, as the two seminal issues the study was designed to better understand.
Gen Z are known for their next level dislike of skinny jeans and side parts. In terms of dating, ... more Gen Z are known for their next level dislike of skinny jeans and side parts. In terms of dating, hookups and fluid notions of intimacy is where it's at. As the largest generation in history, their insights about sexuality, gender, and pretty much everything impact all of us. This article explores their sexual slang and terminologies and what they reveal about these foundational issues.
This article explores body mapping, a participant-driven approach wherein people create richly il... more This article explores body mapping, a participant-driven approach wherein people create richly illustrated life-size maps that articulate their embodied experiences relative to various issues. First developed in the global South as a means of community mobilization and advocacy regarding women’s health and HIV-related care needs, body mapping is now used by researchers, health practitioners, and community agencies globally to explore social determinants of health among diverse groups. This work is relevant to social science and health scholars, community agencies, and those in activist circles who are interested in using body mapping in their mindful academic and applied work.
The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in profound educational, occupational, and familial challenges ... more The COVID-19 pandemic has ushered in profound educational, occupational, and familial challenges for school-aged children and their primary caregivers. During this transitional period, resilience was often featured in pandemic discourse as a solution to managing these unprecedented shifts. However, very little concrete information was provided as to how caregivers should or could mobilize this oft-cited resource.
Our qualitative study was designed to explore how primary caregivers survived or thrived, using resilience as an experiential window through which to better understand how they coped with the complex, unprecedented challenges ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic. One-hour interviews were conducted with caregivers (n = 22, all but two identified as female). Analysis revealed that primary caregivers understood resilience to be surviving the pandemic and making it through with the fewest scars for both them and their children.
Caregivers cultivated resilience through finding joy during the hardships, supporting their children’s adaptations to the changing context, and resisting rules. Surviving the pandemic required resilience, and while this emerged in caregivers’ definitions, their lived experience highlights how joy, supporting adaptations, and resistance were employed to cultivate resilience.
Headlines are dubbing 2023 “The Year of the 50+ Woman,” and even suggesting we’re in the midst of... more Headlines are dubbing 2023 “The Year of the 50+ Woman,” and even suggesting we’re in the midst of a midlife women’s renaissance. Of course, we’re more accustomed as a culture to women fading into invisibility with age.
The current social shift is especially undeniable because of the sheer number of high-wattage female celebrities reclaiming the spotlight and forcing the public to reckon with not just the way their stories have been told, but their very existence.
Think Michelle Yeoh winning an Academy Award for Best Actress at 60 and intoning, “Ladies, don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re past your prime!” Or Viola Davis, Helen Mirren, and Andie MacDowell commandeering the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week, the latter rocking silver dresses and wildly natural silver locks.
As anthropologists interested in human mate choice, the evolution of gender roles, and sexuality, we are curious about the uptick in older women dating younger guys. What do these relationships tell us about where we are and where we’re headed as a culture?
Research about campus safety focuses primarily on identifying problematic student behaviours (i.e... more Research about campus safety focuses primarily on identifying problematic student behaviours (i.e., toxic partying, sexual violence) and institutional infrastructure (i.e., lighting, emergency services), to the exclusion of how safety, as an idea and embodied experience, is constructed. Using qualitive interview data from a participatory action research study conducted at Western University, this article uses a critical feminist lens to examine how undergraduate students (n = 23) and administrators (n = 7) spoke about campus safety as well as spatial vulnerability. Study participants shed compelling light on the "uncomfortable" feelings that pervade their movement across and within the university campus. Often presumed to be a spatially distinct place of privilege for all who work and attend classes within its reach, this is not always the case. Participants experienced this space as one of precarious privilege that reflects, reproduces, and sometimes protects hegemonic systems of white, male, cis-gender institutional power. This glimpse into the emotional geography of the campus sheds new light on safety culture and allied feminist research, specifically that which relates to the interplay between contested notions of safety as well as spatial vulnerability for two stakeholder communities in the neoliberal university.
Research about campus safety focuses primarily on identifying problematic student behaviours (i.e... more Research about campus safety focuses primarily on identifying problematic student behaviours (i.e., toxic partying, sexual violence) and institutional infrastructure (i.e., lighting, emergency services), to the exclusion of how safety, as an idea and embodied experience, is constructed. Using qualitive interview data from a participatory action research study conducted at Western University, this article uses a critical feminist lens to examine how undergraduate students (n = 23) and administrators (n = 7) spoke about campus safety as well as spatial vulnerability. Study participants shed compelling light on the "uncomfortable" feelings that pervade their movement across and within the university campus. Often presumed to be a spatially distinct place of privilege for all who work and attend classes within its reach, this is not always the case. Participants experienced this space as one of precarious privilege that reflects, reproduces, and sometimes protects hegemonic systems of white, male, cis-gender institutional power. This glimpse into the emotional geography of the campus sheds new light on safety culture and allied feminist research, specifically that which relates to the interplay between contested notions of safety as well as spatial vulnerability for two stakeholder communities in the neoliberal university.
Background: New quantitative methods to collect and analyze data have produced novel findings in ... more Background: New quantitative methods to collect and analyze data have produced novel findings in ethnobiology. A common application of quantitative methods in ethnobiology is to assess the traditional ecological knowledge of individuals. Few studies have addressed reliability of indices of traditional ecological knowledge constructed with different quantitative methods.
The Routledge Companion to Gender, Sexuality and Culture,, 2022
Branded as the world’s first feminist dating app, Bumble is the only heterosexual platform where ... more Branded as the world’s first feminist dating app, Bumble is the only heterosexual platform where women make the first move and male users must wait to be chosen. Does Bumble deliver on its promise to empower women and help them take charge of their romantic lives? I explore these compelling questions using auto-ethnographic insights from my experiences on the app alongside my insights as an ethnographer with expertise in the fields of sexuality and digital subjectivity. My findings reveal that using Bumble rarely garners successful dating experiences and it creates additional dating labours for women while emasculating men. Far from a recipe for female empowerment, the app exacerbates pre-existing dating inequities and fails as a feminist platform. Detailed excerpts of my dating encounters and observational data about the socio-material and technological factors that inform the marketing of the app are used to illuminate what I call the “Bumble paradox.” The ways in which these timely findings enrich current research into dating apps, sexuality, and gender in the 21st century is also discussed.
People are swiping on dating apps in record numbers and roughly half of these individuals identif... more People are swiping on dating apps in record numbers and roughly half of these individuals identify as women, which may be the reason why the dating app industry recently assigned the top leadership roles to women. This past year, the most powerful dating apps in the world-Bumble and Tinder-were both run by women. Whitney Wolfe Herd is at Bumble while Renate Nyborg was running Tinder. As scholars who write about dating apps like Bumble and dating and feminism, we were interested to see how journalists reported on these two women leading the male-dominated, highly lucrative online dating industry and we wanted to compare that coverage with how the CEOs represented themselves on social media. We looked at last year's top 50 news stories for each woman that came up in search results. We found a pattern of sexist and patronizing coverage. We noted often repeated descriptors for the leaders and created three categories to describe them: "young tycoon," "feminist revenge" and "sexy poster child." We also did a Google Image search and looked at the top 100 results for each CEO to see how a Google search represented these leaders. What we saw were visually distinct styles intricately tied to each brand. In contrast, we observed more diverse and interesting accounts of gender and leadership in the women's personal media spaces. These stories include notions of motherhood, inclusivity and equity. It seems that significant tensions exist between news representations of women leaders in tech versus how they represent themselves.
Despite decades of research and education, sexual and gender-based violence remain distressingly ... more Despite decades of research and education, sexual and gender-based violence remain distressingly prevalent on university and college campuses globally. The taboos associated with sex, gender inequity, and living in a patriarchal world where misogyny is glorified and criminalised are key socio-cultural determinants driving these forms of violence. Less is known about the ways in which sexual slang or terminology impact how students experience and talk about these events. This paper reports on findings from a participatory action study that explored sexual slang use among female and male undergraduate students (n = 23) with the aim of creating more responsive sexual and gender-based violence policies and practices. The terms identified (n = 59) provide a window into the daily lives of these young people, who display remarkable socio-linguistic adaptation and creativity. They also demonstrate how cultural appropriation, the exclusion of queer students, toxic masculinitycontribute to ongoing incidents of sexual and gender-based violence on campus. These findings contribute new insights into sexual terminology among post-secondary students, particularly in the Canadian context where few studies of this nature exist. They also acknowledge the critical role universities can play in making meaningful structural change to prevent traumatic events from occurring.
Gender, Sex, and Tech!: An Intersectional Feminist Guide, 2022
This autoethnographic chapter illuminates the challenges of using dating apps like Bumble, the em... more This autoethnographic chapter illuminates the challenges of using dating apps like Bumble, the empowering opportunities they can offer older women, and the ways young men are struggling to consolidate their sexual desires and selfhood in relation to the increasingly powerful status of women.
Using qualitative data from an interdisciplinary research project about mental health and communi... more Using qualitative data from an interdisciplinary research project about mental health and community engagement with Indigenous youth in Kasabonika Lake First Nation (Ontario, Canada), this paper explores the factors that constrain and facilitate their ability to contribute to the wellbeing of their community. Case studies are employed to demonstrate how the youth navigate complex social and structural conditions within the context of ongoing colonization through federal and provincial governance arrangements, to make a difference in the place they call home and forge unique inroads that reflect their generational realities and aspirations. The paper contributes to ongoing discussions related to mental health, self-determination, and resilience research.
In most body mapping research, the findings selected for analysis elucidate the most dominant and... more In most body mapping research, the findings selected for analysis elucidate the most dominant and commonly identified issues relative to the study objectives, and they are presented thematically. I sought to develop a systematic analytical approach that would enable me to more fully account for the depth and breadth of data featured on the women and men’s maps and the different modes of communication employed (i.e., symbolic, textual, gendered), referred to as “axial embodiment”. This chapter demonstrates how it can be used to enrich the analysis of body mapping data, and I walk the reader through the different stages of its development and application in our study. These are framed as ethical issues because while I was motivated by a desire to refine the analytical potential of the methodology, I was driven more strongly by a sense of obligation to the participants given the tremendous work they put into their artful creations. This chapter concludes with a discussion of how the participants interpret and explain body mapping and their experiences with HIV/AIDS and HAART, as the two seminal issues the study was designed to better understand.
Gen Z are known for their next level dislike of skinny jeans and side parts. In terms of dating, ... more Gen Z are known for their next level dislike of skinny jeans and side parts. In terms of dating, hookups and fluid notions of intimacy is where it's at. As the largest generation in history, their insights about sexuality, gender, and pretty much everything impact all of us. This article explores their sexual slang and terminologies and what they reveal about these foundational issues.
This article explores body mapping, a participant-driven approach wherein people create richly il... more This article explores body mapping, a participant-driven approach wherein people create richly illustrated life-size maps that articulate their embodied experiences relative to various issues. First developed in the global South as a means of community mobilization and advocacy regarding women’s health and HIV-related care needs, body mapping is now used by researchers, health practitioners, and community agencies globally to explore social determinants of health among diverse groups. This work is relevant to social science and health scholars, community agencies, and those in activist circles who are interested in using body mapping in their mindful academic and applied work.
This book explores body mapping, an arts-based methodology that originated in the global South as... more This book explores body mapping, an arts-based methodology that originated in the global South as a means of community mobilization and advocacy regarding women’s reproductive health and HIV-related care needs. Increasingly popular with qualitative researchers, health practitioners, and community agencies, the unique challenges and benefits of employing body mapping in diverse research and cultural settings have not yet been examined. Using data from an ethnographic study with HIV-positive women and men who struggle with addictions, HIV stigma, and historical traumas stemming from colonialism in two Canadian cities, Orchard analyzes three key issues that shaped the body mapping research experience for the participants and herself as a researcher. Chapter One discusses the emergence of the approach and its operationalization in different research settings. Chapter Two provides an overview of the research project upon which this book is based and participants’ perspectives on body mapping. Chapter Three focuses on the problems associated with the lack of a systematic framework through which to analyze body mapping data. Chapter Four explores the powerful effects of this research approach on study participants and the author herself as a researcher and seeks to make theoretical sense of this transformative experience. Chapter Five examines the cultural appropriation of body mapping by different researchers and community practitioners and its implications for participants’ well-being and the integrity of the methodology. Orchard offers unique and useful insights with which to address these important ethical issues, with an eye to further refining the approach, ensuring the safety of those taking part, and contributing to research that is culturally respectful.
Pulling at the stars inside me: Gender, subjectivity, and the gift of writing to heal At the hear... more Pulling at the stars inside me: Gender, subjectivity, and the gift of writing to heal At the heart of this paper is a story about my transformation into a writer and into a different woman through the adoption of my 'writerly self.' The central backdrop against which this discussion takes place is my sobriety journey, which has shaped and been shaped by creative writing in revolutionary ways. While the example of artists finding their oeuvre and reputation through the productive effects of suffering is important to this discussion, I seek to go beyond this familiar trope. I focus instead on the everyday-ness of transformation and how writing becomes both healing practice and passage to a new gendered subjectivity. What does it mean to write? How does the creative praxis engender new ways of being in the world? How do these processes become therapeutic? What does this look like in the life of an 'ordinary woman'? This paper explores these questions and I draw upon key tensions and creative turning points in my emergence as a writer and a renewed woman to make sense of the answers that have surfaced. My own poetry, flash fiction, and journal entries are used to illuminate these transformative experiences and add flesh to our understandings of what writing means, the ways it can heal, and how it lends itself to the genesis of (re)gendered selves.
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Papers by Treena Orchard
Our qualitative study was designed to explore how primary caregivers survived or thrived, using resilience as an experiential window through which to better understand how they coped with the complex, unprecedented challenges ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic. One-hour interviews were conducted with caregivers (n = 22, all but two identified as female). Analysis revealed that primary caregivers understood resilience to be surviving the pandemic and making it through with the fewest scars for both them and their children.
Caregivers cultivated resilience through finding joy during the hardships, supporting their children’s adaptations to the changing context, and resisting rules. Surviving the pandemic required resilience, and while this emerged in caregivers’ definitions, their lived experience highlights how joy, supporting adaptations, and resistance were employed to cultivate resilience.
The current social shift is especially undeniable because of the sheer number of high-wattage female celebrities reclaiming the spotlight and forcing the public to reckon with not just the way their stories have been told, but their very existence.
Think Michelle Yeoh winning an Academy Award for Best Actress at 60 and intoning, “Ladies, don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re past your prime!” Or Viola Davis, Helen Mirren, and Andie MacDowell commandeering the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week, the latter rocking silver dresses and wildly natural silver locks.
As anthropologists interested in human mate choice, the evolution of gender roles, and sexuality, we are curious about the uptick in older women dating younger guys. What do these relationships tell us about where we are and where we’re headed as a culture?
offer older women, and the ways young men are struggling to consolidate their sexual desires and selfhood in relation to the increasingly powerful status of women.
Our qualitative study was designed to explore how primary caregivers survived or thrived, using resilience as an experiential window through which to better understand how they coped with the complex, unprecedented challenges ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic. One-hour interviews were conducted with caregivers (n = 22, all but two identified as female). Analysis revealed that primary caregivers understood resilience to be surviving the pandemic and making it through with the fewest scars for both them and their children.
Caregivers cultivated resilience through finding joy during the hardships, supporting their children’s adaptations to the changing context, and resisting rules. Surviving the pandemic required resilience, and while this emerged in caregivers’ definitions, their lived experience highlights how joy, supporting adaptations, and resistance were employed to cultivate resilience.
The current social shift is especially undeniable because of the sheer number of high-wattage female celebrities reclaiming the spotlight and forcing the public to reckon with not just the way their stories have been told, but their very existence.
Think Michelle Yeoh winning an Academy Award for Best Actress at 60 and intoning, “Ladies, don’t ever let anyone tell you you’re past your prime!” Or Viola Davis, Helen Mirren, and Andie MacDowell commandeering the catwalk at Paris Fashion Week, the latter rocking silver dresses and wildly natural silver locks.
As anthropologists interested in human mate choice, the evolution of gender roles, and sexuality, we are curious about the uptick in older women dating younger guys. What do these relationships tell us about where we are and where we’re headed as a culture?
offer older women, and the ways young men are struggling to consolidate their sexual desires and selfhood in relation to the increasingly powerful status of women.